The Chandelier Ballroom (12 page)

They would go to the pictures sometimes, and it was there they watched the newsreel of the Coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It had taken place on the twelfth of May.

‘Fancy it being on the exact same date as our wedding day, even if that was three years ago,’ she said excitedly to Arnold, making him smile.

He was more attentive these days, almost as he’d been during their first year of marriage, taking her to so many more places than last year. They were going to far more London theatres, having meals out, going off on little jaunts to the coast. Now a partner in his father’s firm, they had no money worries these days. He’d bought a new car, a sleek 1937 BMW, now able to afford such luxuries, and would proudly drive them to wherever she fancied. He’d also promised a holiday in Venice around September during his two weeks off. The only regrettable thing was that lately he was being compelled to work longer hours, as a partner having an interest in seeing the firm prosper.

‘There’s such pressure at work,’ he explained. ‘All this trouble in the world, stocks and shares going wild, we’ve our work cut out just to keep up.’

They’d not celebrated their third wedding anniversary the way they had those first two years. ‘We don’t want to keep inviting people down to celebrate it,’ he’d said. ‘I’d rather we take ourselves off somewhere instead, just the two of us.’

She was inclined to agree and that weekend, with their anniversary falling on the Wednesday, they had driven to Norfolk on the Saturday to a good hotel, returning home on the Sunday night.

There was one fly in the ointment which, despite it happening more often than it should, he never made a lot of, but at which she could feel his frustration – their sexual relationship.

They’d enjoyed a lovely Saturday, a splendid lunch, then wandering along the shore under a hot, bright sun, leaving only as the low cliffs cast an afternoon shadow across the sand with the sun moving round to the west.

Returning to the hotel they’d sat on the covered veranda for the rest of the afternoon with long, cool drinks before changing for dinner; afterwards had gone to a show, returning for a nightcap and bed.

Under the covers he held her close as they spoke of the wonderful day they’d had. He was telling her how much he loved her and she felt his hand slide up under her nightdress. Instantly her body tensed. Why it should feel this way, she had no idea. She loved him with all her heart, would weep in self-indulgent fear that one day something dreadful could happen to him, an accident or some unexpected illness, to take him from her. To be left in the world alone, without him, would be unbearable. Yet the moment he touched her, her muscles would go rigid. She wanted him to make love to her, she really did, but her reaction had always been the same from the very first day of their marriage.

Those early days she had put it down to a virginal fear, as perhaps many a young bride might go through. Now she knew it for what it was – she did not like the sexual side of marriage. She did not like it with a paranoid fear she could not explain, not to her mother who might chide her, have tried to advise her, even scold her for what she would see as her foolishness, and certainly not to him who might think her a little mad.

He
had
been patient, perhaps hoping she might eventually adjust to what was after all a natural side to marriage. Indeed she had often gone as far as clinging to him, even allowing him to explore her. But something deep inside would crawl up – the only name she could find for it – the moment he grew ready, her legs refusing to yield to him, and though he tried to talk her into allowing them to part to receive him, she just couldn’t. There had been entry once or twice, but so tense had she been that it had hurt, so terribly that she had cried out, causing him to withdraw in fear of hurting her further.

At first he hadn’t been angry, merely attentive, but slowly his patience had ebbed and he would show his frustration with her, not violently – Arnold could never be of a violent nature – but by his very disappointment with her. Aware of it she would cry and he’d hold her to him and soothe her, saying it didn’t matter, though as time went by he had bothered her less and less.

This time in that Norfolk hotel he had pulled away from her without saying a word, had not attempted to cuddle her to him but had merely turned over on his side with his back to her, almost like one relieved that nothing had happened.

‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she had murmured as she lay full of remorse, but he hadn’t replied. Whether he slept she didn’t know. There had been no regular breathing of someone asleep. She had tried to speak to him but again had received no reply and finally she too had turned over to nurse her guilt. By Sunday it was as if it hadn’t happened, he his old self again. They’d spent the day relaxing in the sun, enjoying their meals, and in the afternoon had left for home. But the episode was still there in her mind, lingering as it always did, and she wondered if it was in his too. If it was he hadn’t shown it, making her feel worse, thinking, would it or could it ever change, could she make it change if only for his sake. He was such a good man, he deserved better from her.

Late this Monday afternoon, knowing she should have phoned much earlier but unable to wait until he came home, she rang him at work still full of remorse at her conduct to say how sorry she was for her unreasonable reluctance of sex, fearing he might have been brooding over it all day.

His secretary answered as always, telling her to hold while she put her through. The girl was usually in the outer office, but Joyce realised she was in Arnold’s, she hearing his voice instantly enquire, ‘Who is it, my dearest?’

Dearest!
My
dearest! Joyce’s heart froze, seeming to drop as though made of some huge piece of ice.

Through a fog she heard the girl whisper, ‘It’s your wife, darling,’ followed by Arnold’s frustrated hiss, ‘Damn!’

Seconds later came his voice, loud and clear and cheerful, ‘Hello, love. Anything wrong?’

Unable to speak, she let the phone drop back onto its cradle, her thoughts in turmoil as she stood there staring down at the thing. Had she heard correctly? But there was no mistaking that easy tone of endearment and that whispered epithet, ‘Damn!’

It felt as if her world had collapsed. No wonder he found no anger at her refusal of his love.

Devastated, she dreaded him coming home. And when he did, coming in all bright and easy of mind, asking how she was, how her day had gone, she was barely able to face him, much less smile at him. Yet smile she did, saying her day had gone well. He mustn’t know what she’d overheard. Or was it just a mistake – had she misheard?

Already doubting her thoughts, that night she slept beside him as a wife should, bore his goodnight kiss on her cheek, then turned over pretending sleep. He had immediately drifted off, his breathing soon regulating to gentle slumber. Yet as she lay awake she knew she hadn’t misheard.

Each day she thought of him and that secretary, visualising them together. Had they made love? If so, where? The way he’d called her ‘my dearest’ – yes of course they’d made love. She felt sick each time she imagined them together, she the fool who’d been kept in the dark. Yet she loved him still. Hurt and grieving as she was, she loved him still. The weeks went by and she could find no will to confront him with what she’d overheard, but her heart grieved. Slowly, she found it even harder to bear. With him still pretending to be the loving husband, all the time playing her false, grief was turning to bitterness, yet still she loved him.

Finally unable to stand the mounting pressure any longer, she sought her mother’s arms like a child who has been tormented by others, and to her she poured out her anguish. But instead of taking her in her arms so as to console her, Daphne regarded her daughter from the armchair in her lounge with something close to tolerant scepticism.

‘I do know how you feel about your marital duties, Joyce, being a little like that way myself with your father. And I think that you are probably blaming yourself and have therefore read something into Arnold’s words that may not have been intended in the way you interpreted them. It is easily done.’

‘But I know what I heard, Mummy!’

‘You could have made a mistake, my dear. People often call others darling …’

‘It was
my
darling, as plain as I hear you, and when he was told it was me on the phone, I distinctly heard him say, “damn!”’

‘You could have been interrupting some important matter—’

‘Oh yes, important is right!’ she broke in, pressing the backs of her fingers to her lips in anguish. ‘I can’t bear to think what they were doing before I phoned.’

Her mother rose and went over to her still-seated daughter to bend and take her lightly in her arms. ‘And you’ve been brooding over this all this time. You should have come to me before now. I’d have advised you that it is all in your imagination, that they’d been doing nothing at all underhand.’

Joyce hardly heard her. ‘What have I done for him to need to turn to someone else? Where have I failed him?’

‘You have not failed him,’ her mother said patiently. ‘It’s all in your mind.’

Joyce wasn’t listening, her mind running ahead, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I really thought he loved me! But he’s having an affair.’

‘Of course he isn’t. And he does love you, my dear.’

She paused in thought, then still bending over her daughter, her arms about her, said, ‘What I think you need is to be away from him for a while.’

‘And leave him in that woman’s clutches?’

‘My dear, he’s in no one’s clutches,’ Daphne rebuked. ‘What I am saying is that perhaps being apart from each other for a while might be a good thing. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. If you were to have, let us say, a few weeks away from him, he will soon begin to miss you and come running back …’

‘So you
do
think he’s having an affair?’

‘No, I do not!’

Her mother released her almost in exasperation, returning to her armchair. From there she leaned towards her daughter, speaking to her slowly and purposefully.

‘Now listen to me, Joyce. Whatever you may think or have read into what you thought you heard, he is still true to you. He may appear to have cooled a little. It does happen. It may be he has merely begun to take you for granted. Men are not as deeply involved as women. You must prove to him that you don’t need him as much as he imagines you do.’ She leaned back in her chair as one coming to a decision. ‘Now what I suggest is you and I taking a little holiday, maybe on the Continent, say for a month or two. I shall make the arrangements. Your father will not think it odd the two of us going off somewhere together, mother and daughter with a little wish to be together. Without you, Arnold will soon realise how much he needs you.’

She waited while Joyce took it all in, then assuming it to have been concluded, said quietly, ‘Now dry your eyes and think sensibly. It will do him good having to do without you. You’ll see. It might be good for both of you.’

She smiled as Joyce nodded slowly, more resigned than eager to agree with whatever she suggested.

‘Then it’s settled,’ she concluded firmly, sure that this was the right thing for her daughter. ‘You may leave everything to me, my dear. I will speak to Arnold and tell him what we have planned. I will choose my words to make it sound quite innocuous so you will have nothing to worry about.’

Within a week she was explaining to Arnold that she had persuaded Joyce that it would be nice for them to spend a little time together, despite the fact that he had spoken of taking Joyce away himself in September.

‘I feel we both need a break,’ she said briskly. ‘And September is still quite a way off. We’ll be home a good two months before then. It will be nice for her and for me, a mother and her daughter – a little trip to Florence, I think.’

She was surprised by his ready agreement. ‘Joyce always wanted to go there and you both have a great interest in art. I think she would enjoy wandering around Italian art galleries, and I hear the city is beautiful.’

Daphne said nothing, but to her mind his agreeing seemed almost too eager, in fact it set her thinking. What if her daughter was right to suspect something going on between him and his secretary? But that was nonsense. Arnold was a sober-minded young man, dedicated to his work, who’d never dream of deceiving the wife he loved. It was all in Joyce’s imagination.

At least a holiday together, away from him for a while, would give her something else to think about, help cure her of these fanciful ideas.

All Arnold felt was a surge of relief. For weeks Joyce had been growing ever more distant, turning her cheek away from his kiss when he arrived home from working in the City. She was hardly talking to him, and when compelled to was abrupt and unsmiling, her eyes avoiding direct contact with his.

When he’d asked if she was feeling out of sorts, her only replies had been things like, ‘Nothing wrong with me!’ or ‘Why should I be?’, not going into any further detail as to why she was behaving so strangely, the counter enquiry off-putting, affording no hope of any normal conversation. For him there was nothing to account for her behaviour, and he was almost glad when she and her mother boarded the train to the coast and the channel ferry, the two of them taking the train to Italy.

Free of anxiety for the first time since he and Gillian began their relationship, Arnold didn’t have to rush home and account for his lateness with carefully structured lies. His constant fear was that sooner or later he’d be found out. He loved Joyce, though not in the way he felt about Gillian. She was exciting, could rouse him with a single look from those blue-green eyes.

She’d become his secretary around eighteen months ago. Then he’d merely thought what a lovely girl she was. It was later, when her hand, happening to brush his in the course of working together, sent a massive tingle through his body. His expression must have given him away for she seemed to know immediately what it was he’d felt. From there they’d drawn closer, until that evening in his office a few months ago, he compelled to stay late with some work, it finally resulted in what they’d both known would happen one day.